The following story with a few tweaks has been added to my great grandmother, Sarah, wife of 1828 John SNYDER along with several media objects. Little Sarah Pence was born in Sullivan County, Tennessee where her grandparents and parents had settled when they left VA and PA. She was just a toddler when her parents, Margaretta Roller and Jacob Pence, took their family of five children and with other Pence family members helped settle the new county of Bartholomew and little town of Columbus in Indiana. It was a rapidly growing area when they arrived in the late 1820’s. The fertile farmland was being grabbed up by families from all over and Columbus was a lovely small town for Sarah and her three sisters and twin brothers to grow up in. In 1835, Sarah’s oldest sister, Eliza, married Lewis Sims, the son of a Bartholomew County pioneer, and they operated a large hotel in Columbus. One of her twin brothers, David who worked as a carpenter, married Nancy Hart in 1845, the daughter of another Columbus pioneer and Sarah’s sister Margaret married Western W. Jones that same year. With a family history of having grandparents and parents who fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812, I am sure that her unmarried brother, George, didn’t hesitate to join up with the group going to war with Mexico when Indiana Governor Whitcomb called for volunteers in 1847. Sadly, he was one of the few U.S. soldiers killed in that conflict in Monterey, Mexico that same year when Sarah was 20 years old. By 1850 Sarah at age 22 and her younger sister, Amanda Katherine, at 20 were the only children left in the household. They were extremely close and remained so all of their lives. Jacob, their father, was busy plying his trade. He was a manufacturer of fine cutlery and guns. He was said to be of commanding presence and was fluent in several languages. The next year both girls married in Columbus. Amanda married Julius Jackson Van Meter, a farmer and son of another of Bartholomew’s pioneers, and Sarah married John Snyder, a distiller, from Kentucky. They must have met through John's sister who lived in the neighborhood with her husband. Their first child, Robert, was born in Indiana in 1852, probably at Sarah’s parent’s home. The Snyders made Louisville, KY their home by 1860 where John operated a grocery business. The next two children were born in Louisville and by the time that the Civil War began another child was again born in Indiana. It is possible that Sarah felt safer there and also that her sister Amanda was there for moral support. Amanda was living there with her two youngsters in 1860. In January of 1863, Sarah’s mother died. Louisville was occupied and expecting to be attacked in the summer of 1863. According to a diary and autobiography by sister-in-law, Nancy Hart Pence, the recent widower, Jacob Pence was visiting in Louisville with his daughter, Sarah, and the two of them brought the children to Columbus to stay for a while that year to avoid any conflict. After the danger passed, Sarah returned to Louisville where another two children were born by 1866 before Sarah turned 40. After the war ended, John’s brother, George Wilhoit Snyder, who had gone to Columbus, Johnson County, MO with his wife, Emma Barclay, and their children and bought a mill, urged John and Sarah to come join him. The story of how the family was transported to Missouri was written down by my Great Aunt Ella Snyder Garrett in 1934. She was just a girl of eleven or twelve years at the time of the move. She stated that the trip was, "by train to St. Louis, by boat on the Missouri River to Waverly, Mo and then by wagon to Columbus." The move involved transporting many of their household belongings. It must have been very difficult with six children in tow. It was remembered by Ella, the oldest girl, as "coming to Missouri in a covered wagon". In 1868 they relocated to Freedom Township (near Concordia), Lafayette County, MO where John bought another mill. Another child was born in MO, Martha Katherine. The 1870 census shows the family with four employees and a worth of $10,000. In 1873 the family returned to Louisville where their last child was born and where John died just two years later, in 1875 at the age of 47, leaving Sarah with 7 children still in the home ranging in age from two to twenty. Only twenty-three-year-old Robert, who was later to become a millionaire industrialist, was married and out of the home. Sarah left Louisville and took her children to Iowa where her sister, Amanda, and brother-in-law, Julius Van Meter, had a large farm. It was the place where her widower father had gone to live and had died a few years earlier. Daughter Ella met her husband there and married in DeSoto, Dallas County. Iowa in 1882. Sarah stayed in Iowa until after 1880 when she moved to Independence, MO to be near her sons who were becoming successful businessmen in nearby Kansas City. She lived at 220 W. Moore near a current landmark, the Vaille Mansion. In the 1900 census all of her daughters are shown as located near her in Independence, three of her sons are in Kansas City and only one son, John Jacob, is out of the area. She was indeed the matriarch of this close-knit family and was a strong woman. She died in April of 1913 ans was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery after a funeral at her church, The First Christian of Independence.

Pence and Snyder -- questions about both I think I saw a note a couple of days ago about Snyders going to Redstone We know that Hupps, Michael Thomas,Baumgardner, Adam Smith, Debolt, Christler, and now Snyder all went to Pa in 1768 or earlier. Who else from Culpeper. The Thomas, Hupp, Smith, Debolt and Christler all have a Thomas connection. Who else journeyed to this new area of Virginia -- later to be part of Pennsylvania? Pence family -- if anyone is following all of them. I have Pence lines in Champaign/Clark Co., OH (Wesley pre 1850), Sarah Jane 1833 Ohio (no parents) and one line from Samuel PEnce born 1820 Mifflin Co., PA -- line to OH and Noble Co., IN Take care. Marilyn